Steve Wynn OWNS You!

Those dastardly 'OPPONENTS' explained when Beacon Hill refused to conduct an INDEPENDENT COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS that once legalized, the Predatory Gambling Industry OWNS YOU!


Thank Steve Wynn's Arrogance and Ego for proving the OPPONENTS were right!

Steve Wynn is dictating TERMS!

REPEAL THE CASINO DEAL is the only sensible solution.

Please consider joining and supporting a grassroots movement to oppose Predatory Gambling!

Steve Wynn wants Wampanoags’ deal

Seeks to slice almost a third from casino tax

Thursday, January 30, 2014

By:

Jack Encarnacao

Vegas mogul Steve Wynn — still in competition for the sole Boston-area casino license — is already angling for a tax cut, telling the Gaming Commission in a memo obtained by the Herald he wants the 25 percent state tax on gambling revenue reduced by nearly a third to the rate the Wampanoags negotiated for their proposed casino.

The proposed change in the gambling law could cost the state more than $160 million a year — money the casinos would keep instead. A Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce estimate, frequently cited by state officials and casino developers, predicted at least $500 million a year in revenues on a 25 percent tax from three casinos statewide.

“A Wampanoag casino in Taunton would be a mere 40 miles from our proposed investment in Everett and a real alternative for our patrons,” the Wynn memo reads. “All (resort casinos) should operate pursuant to the same economic terms with the same tax applied to all operators of the same type of facility.”

The tax cut is one of a dozen wished-for changes in Wynn’s memo, which cites the deal Gov. Deval Patrick recently struck with the Mashpee Wampanoags — now seeking federal approval to build a resort casino in Taunton — that calls for the tribe to pay a maximum 17 percent tax. A Wynn spokesman declined to elaborate on the request, saying, “I think it stands for itself.”

Wynn has met privately with top Beacon Hill legislators such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Brian Dempsey to push changes in the casino law that he and state officials have refused to specify. Dempsey did not return calls for comment yesterday. House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo told the Herald last month he’s “not inclined to make any changes” to the 2011 casino law.
Gaming Commission spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said the board — which will decide if Wynn gets a license over Mohegan Sun’s Suffolk Downs plan — has not taken a position.

“The commission is still in the very beginning stages of their evaluation process and haven’t had a chance to assess every aspect of the applications yet,” Driscoll said.

The commission is putting its weight behind some proposed changes, however, voting yesterday to endorse changing a requirement that players pay a 5 percent withholding tax on any winning over $600. The commission is backing IRS guidelines, which set a $1,200 tax reporting threshold and allow players to deduct losses from their reported winnings. This is among Wynn’s proposals, but commission chairman Stephen Crosby said the board’s position is “certainly not for Steve Wynn.”

“Lots of people have written to us and just spoken to us and said this is just out of whack,” Crosby said.

Wynn’s memo also seeks to relieve casinos of having to provide on-site day care for employees’ children and treatment for substance abuse and compulsive gambling; and determining whether prizewinners owe past-due child support or taxes.



http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/01/steve_wynn_wants_wampanoags_deal

Casinos: I’m out

FROM Blue Mass Group:

You know, I was willing to give casinos a chance here in Massachusetts. Other things being equal (yes, yes, I know), more jobs are better; there’s little doubt that at least some gambling dollars that are currently going to Connecticut and Rhode Island would instead stay in Massachusetts if we had casinos; maybe there would be some more tourism money; the revenue would be nice for schools and transportation; etc. Plus, our casino law is the bestest casino law ever written, and we set up the awesomest regulatory agency in the history of casinos whose operations will without question be entirely above board. What could go wrong?

Plenty, as it turns out. Look at what has happened in just the last couple of weeks. East Boston said they didn’t want a casino, which prompted Suffolk Downs to ask for what they would never consider giving any of their customers: a second chance. And not just a second shot at the same game, but an entirely different game, with new rules. And they got it, for no particularly good reason beyond, what, the Commission feeling sorry for Suffolk Downs? So now there will be another vote in Revere for a Revere-only casino, with incoming Boston Mayor Marty Walsh thinking hard about suing to stop it.

Then, as we all know, the ethics of the Gaming Commission tanked when it turned out that one of Chairman Steve Crosby’s old business buddies stood to make a killing if Steve Wynn gets his casino in Everett. Apparently it didn’t occur to Crosby when he accepted the job that this might turn out to be a problem. To which one can only say, WTF. The utterly predictable lawsuits have already begun, and one has to imagine that the entire process for the eastern license is in danger of falling apart because of Crosby.

Steve and Bill

Then the Gaming Commission decides that Steve Wynn is “suitable” – as long as he’s not engaged in corrupt business practices in Macau. I don’t even know what to say about that beyond, again, WTF (ryepower12 has more). The best part of this one is that Bill Weld is representing Wynn before the Commission, and the photo of Wynn and Weld is priceless.

And now, speaking of Steve Wynn, check out this bombshell in today’s Herald:

Vegas casino titan Steve Wynn, who passed a big hurdle yesterday before the state Gaming Commission, has been meeting with legislators and said the Bay State’s casino law needs changes before he’ll consider the business climate here palatable.
“In our conversations with the state, we’re attempting to get issues resolved that will comfort us,” Wynn said during a break at yesterday’s hearing, at which the commission’s investigators recommended Wynn be deemed suitable to pursue a license.
“We’re expected to make unequivocal commitments — both in the way we do our business, financially, and everything else — to the state of Massachusetts. And we want to make sure that we have the same thing in return,” Wynn said.
Wynn declined to detail what changes he wants in the casino law, telling a Herald reporter, “Not with you. This is not the place.”
But in later remarks, Wynn referred to his concerns about the “arithmetic of gaming establishments” and having enough revenue to keep job-creation promises.

Holy sh!t. Sure looks like Wynn is going to try to get the legislature to cut the tax rate that casinos are required to remit to the Commonwealth (and the Herald reports that two weeks ago Wynn met with Brian Dempsey, the chair of the House Ways & Means Committee). That tax rate, of course, is the basis of all the budget projections (which are already absurdly optimistic) that are at the heart of the case for why we should have the bloody things here in the first place. Maybe he’ll try to get a break from the no-smoking law as well.

And if he doesn’t get his rate cut, then what? Thanks but no thanks? I never thought I’d say this, but read the comments on the Herald article. Some of them are spot-on.

So, f^ck it. This casino law was an interesting experiment, and it seems pretty clear that the experiment has failed. Repeal it, either in the legislature or at the ballot, and let’s have a real conversation about how to generate needed revenue without wallowing any further in this muck.


http://bluemassgroup.com/2013/12/casinos-im-out/


BEST COMMENT!

Finally...a little honesty about Beacon Hill

Taylor Armerding: Legislature doesn't want to look too closely at casino gambling
The Salem News

Brian Dempsey has a drill.

That's great. Haverhill's state representative is in a position to use a fiscal drill, as the new chairman of the Powerful House Ways and Means Committee (I'm making "powerful" part of the name, since that's the way everybody says it).

The problem is that he is only allowed to use it selectively.

Shortly after Gov. Deval Patrick's $30.5 billion budget for the coming fiscal year landed in the legislative chambers, Dempsey announced that he intended to "drill down" into the document, to see if the assumptions being made by the administration were valid.

That, of course, is what his boss and benefactor, House Speaker Robert DeLeo, wants him to do. And it is well worth doing. Legislators should not accept the governor's budget without some serious scrutiny.

But, based on that logic, it would also make sense for Dempsey to get his drill out to validate the utopian assumptions made by the promoters of expanded gambling in Massachusetts — resort casinos and racetrack slot parlors.

Before handing out permits for gambling palaces that will change the culture and character of the state, it would make sense to take a sober, no-spin look at whether the gauzy promises of thousands of good jobs and hundreds of millions in new money for the state, are real or would be offset by other social and economic costs.

Uh, not so much. That's not what his boss and benefactor wants him to do. DeLeo's mind is made up.

Ask the speaker a question about gambling — any question — and the answer will always be a repetitive mantra about jobs and money ... uh, "revenue."

So there was Dempsey a week or so ago, dismissing a proposal backed by state Sen. Stephen Brewer, D-Barre, who is Dempsey's Senate counterpart as its top budget writer.

That proposal would require an independent analysis of the costs and benefits of expanded gambling before the Legislature takes it up again.

No need, Dempsey said. There have already been multiple studies done.

Technically true. There have been studies. But they are in more need of a drill than Patrick's budget. They have either been paid for by gambling interests or use information supplied by gambling interests. You don't even have to read them to know what the conclusions are.

But there won't be an independent study, not because there is no need for one, but because DeLeo doesn't want one. The reason Dempsey sits where he does now is not because he's a budget genius, but because he's the speaker's go-to guy on casinos and slots.

But maybe, just maybe, the rest of the Legislature has some lingering interest in whether more gambling will really benefit the state, long-term. With the help of the state of New Hampshire and some gambling analysts, including Lawrence's Les Bernal, executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, here are a few things Dempsey would discover, if he would only use his drill.

The New Hampshire Gambling Commission did a study on the costs and benefits of expanded gambling in our neighbor to the north. The commission concluded that a casino in New Hampshire would lead to a net loss of $68 million. That's a lot of teaching jobs.

If casinos really did make things better, the states that have them would be doing much better than we are here. But they're not. The states with the worst budget deficits, including New Jersey and Connecticut, are casino states.

Casinos themselves aren't doing all that well — gambling revenue is declining, and some of them are going bankrupt.

Casinos and slots don't create new wealth. They siphon existing wealth away from other businesses (including state lotteries) and people, most tragically from people who can least afford it — those whom Dempsey and his colleagues would be calling "the most vulnerable among us" if they were pushing another government entitlement program. Gambling takes money that people would otherwise be able to spend on food, medicine and housing.

Expanded gambling's delicately named "social costs" include poverty, debt, crime, domestic violence, other addictive behaviors involving alcohol and drugs, and suicide. Is that what the state wants to promote? Whatever happened to: "If it saves just one life, it's worth it"?

The response to much of this is the standard line that, "people are going to gamble anyway, and as long as they're going to do it, we shouldn't let Connecticut and Rhode Island reap all the benefits."

To that, Bernal notes that for 45 years, millions of people have been streaming across the border to New Hampshire, to buy retail products from computers to TVs to building materials, so they can avoid the Massachusetts sales tax. The response from our elected leaders? They raised the sales tax by 25 percent 18 months ago, increasing the incentive for business and jobs to move elsewhere.

Yet they wonder why job creation is a problem — and keep telling us gambling will solve it.

Las Vegas, in debt-ridden Nevada, glitters and shines. But it was all built by losers — literally. Gambling riches are a mirage for everybody but those running the tables.

There's our new slogan, after DeLeo and Dempsey get done bringing casinos and slots to the state: "Massachusetts: It's for losers."

Rep. Brian Dempsey Supports Racino Giveaway

SHNS reports:

DEMPSEY ANSWERS RACINO BENEFIT QUESTIONS, ‘NO-BID’ CHARGES

After racino skeptics, including Gov. Deval Patrick and Senate President Therese Murray, charged that the House plan for racetrack slot machines represented “no-bid” contracts, Rep. Brian Dempsey’s office said late last week that the House opted to avoid a “free-for-all method of licensure.”


Dempsey did not address one of the opponents’ chief arguments, that the new gambling venues will suck money from the Lottery and related local aid.

How did this become an argument presented by "opponents"? This was a statement included within the initially Spectrum Report that determined the Lottery would be impacted. Taxpayers spent $189,000 for that report. Are we to lightly dismiss its assessments?


How much more clear could this be?

Inspector General Greg Sullivan, a procurement expert and state watchdog, told the News Service last week that licenses for racetrack slots included in the House bill represented no-bid contracts "plain and simple."